David McElroy

I want to tell everybody to shut up. It’s not personal, though.

I don’t know whether to shout or whisper. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s an entire culture that I want to be quiet, not this person or that person.

I’m not angry with anybody. There’s nobody in particular who I want to shut up. It’s chaotic voices and public background music and blaring televisions. But it’s visual “noise,” too. It’s flickering screens of all kinds. It’s beeping phones and computers and mobile devices. It’s constant notifications.

It’s a culture that demands my attention and won’t leave me alone.

When I’m honest with myself, though, I realize that I’m the problem. I have the ability to shut this cacophony off at any time. But I refuse to take control of my life and my environment. I think I can be the master of my media culture.

I’m so addicted to what has come to seem normal that I’m like an alcoholic who thinks he can have just one drink. Or maybe two.

But in the rare moments when I can listen to my own spirit, I know I’m making this way too complicated. It’s not about the noise and the screens and the notifications.

It’s about silence. I desperately need to find silence for my heart and my mind — so I can hear the still small voice that whispers truth and love and wisdom when I’m quiet enough to hear it.

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I have no patience anymore for people who believe they’re going to save the world.

Maybe I’ve seen too many would-be saviors turn into monsters. Maybe my time working in politics taught me what the system does to idealists.

Or maybe I just see too much of my younger self in these well-meaning do-gooders.

Even if you have brilliant ideas — and even if I agree with your ideas — there’s something fundamentally misguided about the notion that the world is waiting for you to come along and save everyone.

Any plan to “save the world” is necessarily going to involve imposing control from the top down. Even if we ignore the stunning arrogance and immorality of imposing control on millions or even billions of people against their will, the truth is that you will never be able to do that.

Your efforts to impose your will are doomed to be crushed by political systems that have existed since long before you were born. And recent history is littered with the corpses of would-be tyrants — and with many millions of their innocent victims.

So what should the budding idealist do — when much of the most popular advice to young people urges them to “go out and change the world”?

That’s simple. Change yourself. That’s the only thing over which you have actual control.

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The mention of the man she hates triggered a strong verbal outburst from my friend Friday night.

“I wish he would die!” she said with conviction. “You might think that sounds bad, but that’s what he deserves!”

Nothing had really happened. I had merely mentioned having seen this man who she now hates. I knew she had vitriol for him, but I guess I hadn’t quite seen how deep her hatred went. She had more to say — and her diatribe was peppered with strong profanity — so I just listened.

As I drove home a few minutes after midnight, I felt a dull ache in my heart over what I had heard. I wasn’t angry at my friend for her anger and hatred. I wasn’t even judging her, because there was no way of judging her without judging some past versions of myself as well.

It wasn’t that I’ve had this sort of angry outburst of personal hatred before. It wasn’t that I’ve used this kind of strong language to wish the very worst on someone. Those things aren’t my style. I’m more devious. More deceitful.

I’m better at hiding the hate in my heart, but I’m no different.

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